Scams Awareness Month

Scams Awareness Month is in
July and is being run by Citizens Advice. The aim is to raise public awareness
of scams, share stories and find out how to protect yourself and others from
these crimes. You can find out more and
access their downloadable and online resources from the Citizens Advice website

We also wanted to share NTS
Scams Team resources to help support the campaign and give you some ideas on
how you could get involved:

Friends Against Scams:

What a great opportunity to
get involved in Friends Against Scams, you can use it as a tool to support you
during the month

If
you haven’t done so already become a Friend by attending a session or doing the
online training

You can download and access
the Citizens advice materials from the above website

There are additional NTS Scams Team resources
hosted on the website, in the partner hub

You can distribute these to
within your local community or to any groups who may benefit from the posters.

Facebook:

Join our new public Friends Against Scams Facebook
Page. Here you can advertise any sessions you are having,
promote the work you are doing for Scams Awareness Month, share the FAS
training, invite people to join the group etc.

Make a pledge on the site and share the training via Facebook e.g., "I
pledge to tell at least 5 people how to be Scam Aware”, " I pledge to tell at
least 10 people about Friends Against Scams”

Twitter:

Send out tweets during this month using our social media images and the
hashtag #scamaware

The team will be hosting two Twitter
chats on the 3rd July and the 31st July, via our
@AgainstScams account on the first and last Monday of the month. The first will
invite people to discuss their personal experiences and thoughts surrounding
scams with the team posing questions to those participating and the second chat
will be a Q&A session where the participants will get to ask questions. Both
chats will be using the hashtag #SAMchat.

If have any other ideas or
plans for the month it would be great to hear from you, and don’t forget to use
the Friends Against Scams tool to support your work and advertise what
you’re doing on social media and our new public Facebook page.

Variety
of methods scammers used has opened my eyes to what may have previously
appeared as lower level nuisance.